Thinking more and more on the serial structure. “Give ‘em what they expect, but different!” — That old paradoxical entertainment rule is ringing in my ears. I feel like I need to revamp my approach to MIDNIGHT ep 3 and possibly resign to keeping CHILDSEEKER as a whole part (and possibly reworking it so it wraps better. At the very least, we need June’s epilogue to be grafted onto the end as a final chapter). I say need… the issue I’m struggling with is containment. All published parts, no matter how small, should be a complete story as far as stories go. If that’s true (and I suspect it will be, even for an audience that is okay with reading serially) then I’ve a problem with ep3… ep1 and ep2 shouldn’t be split, and CHILDSEEKER is risky business because the only story that “ends” there is the mini-story of Bettine’s initial conquest. So that needs to wrap tightly if nothing else.

General rule: if there’s no obvious denouement, then the story didn’t end. There will be artful exceptions where something can be abrupt, but for the junior novelist, one would do well to get good at churning out legit stories against different word counts before getting artsy. Especially if they want to make any dough doing it.

See? Checking out the CC blog on a whim and in the second article’s comments: “I never forgave the author that finished mid flow, expecting the reader to proceed straight to the next 600-page book. Sequels and series are fine, but unless you explicitly advertise the book as only part of a story it should be a satisfying read as a standalone, otherwise to me it’s misleading.”

And then conversely, from the same thread: “Turning to another facet of the conversation, there was a time when writers—Dickens for one—knew how to exploit serialization of their stories for purposes of adding enjoyment to the purchaser’s meta-read experience.”

I’ve heard rumblings that the digital age has revived the age of the serial and penny dreadful. It seems very plausible, but I’ve not come across hard data. Interesting times!

Did not lock into a good writing rhythm today. It’s been a week of slow goings! There’s still 5,000 words looming that I owe to myself… eep. I typed some words for the non-zero count (like, 50) before I stalled with being bored. I know where the scene is supposed to go but I am bored and uncommitted to getting it there because I’ve convinced myself the whole episode needs to be reworked. The story is wandering… not lost, but meandering and not in a hurry. It doesn’t want to escape. I’m typing this right now about 5x faster. I wonder what the cure is! I’ve beaten similar feelings by forcing my way through it. Perhaps I need a stretch of uninterrupted hours to Butt In Chair it. Weekend, c’monnnn.